Malaysia Day Four

On the Pier

In the Family Quay

House on the Quay

Toilet for Tourists

Tuesday morning was for exploring.. which for Yvonne, means finding bookstores. The internet connection continued to be chancy, but we finally got a good Google map of where the bookstores were. By luck, our hotel was less than five minutes walk away from a cluster of bookstores, and we checked out about four of them.

Seoul taxi drivers are well known for their devil-may-care attitude about things that include speed limits, lane markings, zebra-crossings, and the law of physics that demands that two objects cannot simultaneously inhabit the same space. In Penang, however, Seoul taxi drivers would seem like little old ladies – tremulous, careful, and ridiculously conservative. Scooters, cars and buses ricochet around the city, and walking the streets becomes something like living inside of a pinball machine, and you’re the money ball.

In Little India I had some kind of delicious street-food – a kind of potato and corn tart with a lot of some kind of red spice. This would later come back to haunt me.

Then it was a walk down to the quays, which were quaint and antiquated, not too mention thoroughly commercialized. My favorite thing, I think, was the “bathroom” for tourists.. a rectangular hole in a slab of concrete, a hole that opened directly to the bay below, and beneath which swam hordes of little fishies, all looking to get “lucky” when someone had to use the bathroom. I think that tells you all you need to know about how horrible it is to be a fish, and if I ever am to be reincarnated on the wheel of life, I know have a pretty good idea of where I’ll end up.^^

Then, as we walked to Fort Cornwall, we noticed the “hop and stop” free bus for tourists and with that devil-may-care attitude that makes us popular among test pilots, extreme adventurers, bareback gays, and heterosexual priests, we hopped onboard.  The bus runs from the ferry to the tallest building in Georgetown, in a tight loop that is occasionally the same roads, and the bus, mercifully, is air-conditioned.

We ran the loop until it passed Fort Cornwall again, where we decamped. The fort wasn’t all that, but at 2 Ringgit it didn’t have to be, and it did allow me to take this picture of Yvonne, nobly defending the Empire against the wogs what begins at Calais.

Defender of Empire

And, then imprisoned for her imperial excesses:

Jailhouse Rock

Somewhere along the sweaty way Yvonne left her sweater (Yes Virginia, 32 degrees and Yvonne wore a sweater) behind, and I gallantly stayed put under the shade of some trees while she had to go back and retrieve it.

Then a walk to the hotel, where we luxuriated in the Air-con for a bit, before heading out for a late afternoon bit of Indian food. Yvonne headed off to do some shopping at the bookstores, while I headed back to the hotel to face Buttocalypse from my morning’s food. The less said, the better.^^

When Yvonne returned we headed back to the Red Food Court, had some light snacks, and chilled.

Back to the hotel, watched some ridiculous TV (ridiculous, but after three years of not having a TV I find most anything on it intriguing) and another night of air-conditioned slumber.

“It’s just the same thing, the same way, every day: Stupefaction!”